Gershon Baskin

Gershon Baskin is one of the most recognizable names in the Middle East Peace process. His dedication to creating a culture of peace and environmental awareness, coupled with his impeccable integrity, has earned him the trust of the leaders of all sides of the century old conflict. Few people have such far-reaching and positive impacts on promoting peace, security, prosperity and bi-national relationships.

“Strategic thinking requires the ability to design a course of events, policies and decisions that create a different reality. Most people get stuck in the present and link onto the past, limiting their ability to imagine a different future. The reality that we have all known between Israel and the Arabs is debilitating, it stunts imagination and diminishes the ability to design policies that can change the conflictual basis of relations. . Those relations based on justified fear, influenced by lack of human contact and reinforced by continued violence solidify patterns of thinking and behavior that negatively influence public policies that end with sustaining conflict rather than breaking out of animosity and turning a new page. What the parties in conflict say and do are mutually influential and reinforcing in keeping the parties in conflict.”
Gershon Baskin

Biographical Highlights

Advisor to both Israeli, Palestinian and International Prime Ministers on the Middle East Peace Process

Founder and Director of IPCRI, the Israeli-Palestinian Public Policy Institute (think tank)

Initiator and negotiator of the secret back channel between Israel and Hamas for the release of Israeli soldier Gilad Schalit

Involved in research and advocacy concerning topics such as social policy, environmental security, political strategy, peace education, economics and culture.

Active in the development affordable solar projects with the goal of providing clean electricity for 50 million people by 2020.

Gershon Baskin, Ph.D., was the initiator and the person responsible for the secret back channel between Israel and the Hamas that successfully negotiated the release of Israeli abducted soldier Gilead Schalit.

Dr. Baskin was the Israeli Co-Director and founder of the Israel/Palestine Center for Research and Information (IPCRI) – a joint Israeli-Palestinian public policy think and “do”-tank located in Jerusalem. Since January 2012 he is the Co-Chairman of IPCRI’s Board of Directors. He initiated the founding of IPCRI in 1988 following ten years of work in the field of Jewish-Arab relations within Israel, in Interns for Peace where he lived for two years in the Israeli-Palestinian village of Kufr Qara, the Ministry of Education and as Executive Director of the Institute for Education for Jewish-Arab Coexistence (established by the Israeli Ministry of Education and the Prime Minister’s Office at Baskin’s initiative). Click here for Gershon Baskin’s Professional Experience

During the Premiership of the late Yitzhak Rabin, he served as an advisor on the Israeli-Palestinian peace process to a secret team of intelligence officers established by Mr. Rabin. Dr. Baskin was a member of the Jerusalem Experts Committee established by the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office during the Final Status Negotiations in 2000-2001. Click here to see the advisory positions that Gershon Baskin held.